Blood Trilogy (Book 2): Draw Blood

by Bovberg, Jason

  “… hell are we going anyway?” Scott’s loud voice filters into his consciousness, but he lets it drift away, as well as Joel’s steely-edged response.

  Michael is simply staring forward, losing himself in the monstrousness of the blaze before them, and the atmospheric phenomenon above it. Great columns of white smoke, streaked with black, drift northeast, and above it all, there’s that almost purple sky-throb.

  The tendrils of pulsing light that reach down into the smoke remind him of the morning it began, when Steven and Carol dropped to the floor behind him, and vehicles along College veered out of their lanes and coasted to stops, their drivers slumped over the wheels. And the appearance of the sky, when it happened … the shards of light raining down on the earth, defying reason, defying his very grasp of the meaning of the world. Even now, the sight fills him with a dread that reaches beyond bewilderment and into a kind of numb disconnect. It seems to have that effect on everyone in the car: They all cast occasional bleak glances skyward, and then look away, their faces reflecting a kind of futility.

  But the sight also sparks something deep within … more pieces of memory—

  —at his window at work, mesmerized despite his fallen colleagues—

  —the dark red pulse within the columns of light—

  —the huge atmospheric phenomenon above everything—

  —something shifting there, at the zenith of it all, something roiling above the blue Colorado heavens, casting cosmic shadows, something larger than his comprehension, something searching and … watching—

  —and his mad dash toward the stairwell, crashing into desks, stumbling—

  —his only thoughts of Susanna and Rachel …

  The memory of that … whatever it was … something mind-boggling shifting above the sky … fills him with new dread, and he leans forward to search the heavens, but he sees nothing but blue sky streaked with smoke. The jagged memory leaves him feeling infinitesimal beneath the sway of a malevolent presence that can only pound and bellow.

  Joel and Scott are sparring again.

  “… gonna make me wish I’d just driven on by, dude.”

  “Yeah, I’m wishing the same thing, Officer.”

  Laughter. “Good ol’ Scott.”

  “I mean, did you guys have any sort of plan, or are you just out for a leisurely drive?”

  “We just saved your life, asshole!”

  Rachel’s voice shakes Michael fully out of his spell, and he glances back at her. She returns his gaze, gestures with her head toward Scott with exasperation. Michael maintains the eye contact with his daughter, trying to communicate something but unsure what that is.

  Her expression darkens, and her mouth opens slightly, and he realizes that a tear has spilled from his eye. He wipes it hastily away, turns forward to face the windshield.

  “I didn’t ask for any rescue,” Scott says. “I was safe in there!”

  “Coulda fooled me,” Joel says, “the way you were pressed up against the window, like some hungry puppy.”

  For some reason, this image tickles Danny, and he bursts out with helpless giggles. Michael supposes it’s the boy’s way of releasing some pent-up emotion, finding some small measure of catharsis.

  “He’s right,” the boy snickers, “you were just like that!”

  And then he dissolves into mirth again.

  The adults glance around at each other, smiles on their faces. Scott appears ready to explode but finally sighs out of his anger and just watches the kid. In a moment, Michael and Rachel are laughing, and even Scott cracks a lopsided grin before facing away, toward the window.

  “You were just like Molly!” Danny says, the giggles starting to subside. “Just like Molly. That was our dog.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Scott says, giving Danny an almost reluctant but friendly shove against his bony shoulder.

  The laughter feels good to Michael, and he savors the sensation in his chest. He hasn’t laughed in days. Then he responds to Danny’s comment about his dog.

  “So what happened to Molly, Danny?”

  Danny comes all the way out of his laughter, then, and just starts nodding.

  “Molly didn’t wake up either.”

  Silence.

  “I’m sorry, Danny.”

  “That’s okay, she was old.”

  Michael pats the boy’s knee and is trying to think of something more to say when—

  “Hey!” Joel blurts.

  Directly ahead, coming toward them, is a familiar truck.

  “It’s Kevin!” Rachel says.

  “Wait,” Joel says, trepidation in his voice, “something’s up.”

  The blue truck is jerking left and right as it barrels forward. Joel slows the Hummer and they all watch as Kevin skids the truck north onto College Avenue. Michael can just make out the large man’s face contorted in alarm.

  Rachel lets out a gasp.

  There are several survivors hunkered down in the flatbed, and three bodies are clutched to the rear gate like spiders poised to strike. Raised voices are coming from the vehicle, echoing along the barren street, and then they fade abruptly as the truck careens out of sight.

  “Holy shit!” Rachel cries. “That was Chrissy in there! And the twins!”

  The Hummer lurches forward, its motor roaring.

  “I take it they weren’t able to grab weapons,” Joel says. “Or any blood.”

  “Or they ran out.”

  “Like we did.”

  “Oh, the blood again!” Scott cuts in.

  Rachel throws a glare at him.

  Joel clips the bumper of a Volkswagen Beetle, sending it spinning, and then they’re turning onto College.

  The truck is a hundred yards ahead. Joel starts jabbing at the horn, sending staccato blasts to catch Kevin’s attention. The rear of the truck is fishtailing, but the bodies’ ability to remain attached to the tailgate is inhuman. None of them falls.

  The truck is flailing around stalled cars and wrecks, and the things grasping for purchase at its tailgate keep lunging forward at the flatbed’s occupants, who seem to be cautiously warding them off with their arms and feet.

  “How are those things not falling?!” Rachel cries.

  “Maybe we can give them a little help,” Joel says, goosing the Hummer still more.

  “Careful!”

  They close the distance rapidly after Kevin hears their horn, following in the wake of the zigzagging truck, weaving between abandoned vehicles. Michael holds on for dear life, feeling as if he might crash right through the window and fall into the street. The rear of Kevin’s truck looms suddenly before them, and the three things holding on to the tailgate glare at Joel and Michael, then back at their female prey cowering in the back of the truck. The bodies’ heads swivel jerkily, insect-like. The upside-down faces are caricatures of fury.

  And yet their basic underlying humanity is undeniable. One of them is an athletic teen sporting a blond buzz cut; Michael can’t help but imagine the boy’s trip to the barber, his after-school workouts, his celebrations with whatever team he belonged to. The other is a woman around fifty, her hair long and gray, all her clothes gone, her otherwise toned body splayed wide, the joints inflamed; and yet there’s kindness hiding in her features, beneath the alien rage. These observations—occurring within the space of mere seconds—cause Michael’s breath to catch. He sees what Joel intends, and there is a part of him that is compelled almost beyond restraint to reach over, grab the wheel, and veer them off course.

  Somehow he resists the urge.

  Ten feet, five, and—

  “Hold on!” Joel shouts.

  The impact jars Michael forward, and Joel and Rachel let loose with emphatic ooomphs.

  The lower extremities and pelvises of the teen and the older woman are crushed between the vehicles, and a terrible, tormented gasping fills the air. The third body—that of an older businessman in a torn suit, his tie flapping uselessly—slides across the Hummer’s massive hood and comes to rest
against the windshield, flat on its back. Its head is right there, the flat eyes darting from Joel to Michael as if to gauge which of the two men is the greater threat—or the more vulnerable target. Its hands and bare feet clamber across the slick hood, quick and sure, the fingers grasping the barrier between the hood and the windshield, the bare toes finding the grill in the center of the Hummer’s ridiculous expanse of hood.

  Michael rears back, shielding his face, despite the safety-glass barrier.

  Both bodies at the truck’s tailgate go down to the asphalt, falling out of sight, and then the Hummer is bouncing roughly over them. Rachel makes a kind of mewling noise.

  Kevin’s truck goes swerving to the right, free of its attackers, and Michael has a glimpse of the three girls in the back, exhausted but safe, holding on tight, watching the drama on the Hummer’s hood—or perhaps still trying to determine who has come to save them.

  Joel continues straight north, and as they slow to swerve through a collision immediately adjacent to the CSU track, the body on the hood takes the opportunity to jab its head straight at the windshield. There’s a horrid thump, and the head stays riveted there as if attached.

  Joel rounds the wheel in a vicious swerve, but the thing stays anchored right where it is. “Damn!”

  There’s a vibration now at the dash, and a throbbing heat, and impossibly the glass begins to fog.

  “Holy shit!” Scott cries from the back. “It’s melting the glass!”

  “Can it do that?” Joel says, and there’s a dark awe in his voice.

  The face of the thing is a human parody, its mouth a mocking slash. Michael can definitely sense intelligence there.

  “Get that thing off of there!” Scott cries.

  “Hold on!” Joel shouts, and plants both feet on the brakes.

  The Hummer shudders violently, and the former businessman’s face snarls as the limbs struggle to maintain their backwards grip. Finally, the body goes sliding across the hood, stopping at the front grill, half of it hanging down toward the bumper.

  Michael sees only the head and thrashing limbs.

  “Die, you bastard!” Joel shouts, then punches the Hummer forward again.

  Right in the center of the windshield is a plate-sized blob of bruised glass, not shattered or broken, but partially sagging, as if molten. Even as he’s thrown back against his seat, Michael can’t help but stare at it with frank curiosity.

  Joel swerves the Hummer mightily, left and right, trying to dislodge their unwelcome parasite.

  “Crush it against a tree or something!” Scott yells.

  “I don’t want to wreck this thing!”

  The body manages to gain a sturdy foothold and leaps onto the hood again, sliding directly toward Michael.

  “Truck!” Rachel calls. “Here it comes!”

  The Chevy surges in from the right, revving hard. Michael risks a glance, sees Kevin’s sweaty face, and Bonnie next to him, hysterical.

  The body scrabbles for a grip on the slippery surface, continuing its awkward slide. It reaches for the edge of the hood, misses. It clutches at Michael’s side mirror, does a heavy flip, and lodges itself on the side rail directly next to him. The thing’s head is bent over in a neck-cracking position, the eyes staring into the vehicle with dead, red-rimmed ire, and the body is bowed so severely backward that it hardly seems human at all. Michael leans as far from the door as possible, frantically gesturing Kevin closer.

  The head lunges at Michael, thumping mercilessly on the nearly shattered window, and Michael somewhat pointlessly reaches over and locks the door. The dead eyes react to the proximity of his hand, darting at it, rapping the glass loudly. Michael sees mottled, bruised skin where it comes into contact with the window, but the thing seems to be suffering no pain.

  “Hold on!” Joel cries, and Kevin’s truck comes heaving at them broadside.

  But the thing is aware, leaping up and above the window just as the truck clanks hard against the Hummer’s side panels. Joel maintains his hold on the wheel, and the thing clangs and batters the roof above them. Michael remembers seeing a luggage rack up there and knows it’s got just what it needs now to hang on.

  “Watch the windows on all sides!” Joel yells. “Lock your doors!”

  He swings the Hummer wide, left and right, but the body on top of them hangs tight. Joel straightens out to maneuver between two substantial collisions, and the body swings over the opposite side of the vehicle—effortlessly, as if it has learned from what happened at Michael’s window—and positions itself at Danny’s window.

  “Look out!” Michael calls. “Rachel, watch it!”

  Anchored tightly on the luggage rack, the thing has the leverage to swing its head down against the window, savagely, and the glass spiderwebs in a quick thwack!

  “Danny!” Rachel cries, reaching over the boy protectively.

  What happens next occurs too quickly for Michael—or any of them—to comprehend.

  The head comes swinging at the window again, with a dexterity that fills Michael with outright terror. Elbows angled and framing the shattered window, the head pokes through, gasping. Its flat, dry eyes swivel madly in their sockets, regarding all of them in an instant and landing on its closest target.

  Rachel is already yanking Danny backward. “Noooo! Get the f—”

  Danny’s seatbelt locks, and Rachel loses half her grip.

  The gasping head jabs at Danny, at his face and his desperately stretched-back neck, and the boy makes a terrible wet squelch in his throat.

  Everyone is yelling.

  “GET OFF HIM, YOU BASTARD!” Rachel is screaming, angling her hips to kick at the inhuman face, but the head receives the blows with the merest of flinches, then dives back at Danny, lunging, lunging, and Rachel is shrieking.

  Without even realizing it, Michael is shouting and angling his body to kick at the head, too, but the thing is relentless, and now he can feel the tips of his toes going numb as his foot makes repeated contact.

  “Don’t touch it!” he cries, yanking his leg back. “Rachel, don’t touch it, it’ll hurt you!”

  “I don’t care!”

  Joel has tried everything with the Hummer, jerking it violently, and now he comes to a sudden halt, heaving his passengers forward. Rachel, unbuckled, goes flailing against the large center console, screeching in fear and anger. Scott thumps the back of Michael’s seat, cursing. Some part of Michael is aware of Kevin’s truck sailing past them.

  Danny is now fully in the thing’s grasp. The boy’s eyes have rolled back in his head, and Michael gets an awful glimpse of melted skin across his face. Just as Michael is reaching out to grab the boy with one final desperate grab, the thing yanks Danny’s small body through the destroyed window—glass scraping the boy’s flesh cruelly—and flings him to the asphalt. The body of the businessman then drops nimbly to the ground like some obscene crab and falls on Danny, the stabbing head working frenetically.

  Rachel squawks raggedly in despair.

  “He’s gone!” Michael cries, appalled.

  “No no no no no!” Rachel is repeating hoarsely.

  “For fuck’s sake!” Scott says, his voice trembling and pitched high. “Get us out of here!”

  The Hummer is already moving, and Kevin’s truck is fifty feet to the north, idling. Kevin’s head is down on his chest, and Bonnie has her hands over her face. The girls in the back are all perched at the tailgate, staring at them with horror.

  Joel clears his throat, doesn’t say anything.

  Rachel is mewling on the floorboards.

  The Hummer closes the distance and pulls up next to Kevin. Michael’s window slides down in damaged fits and starts, the glass falling away in webbed chunks.

  “Who was—?” Bonnie manages.

  Michael shakes his head, unsure what to say.

  He acknowledges the girls in the back of the truck. They are splattered and streaked with a terrible amount of blood. Their eyes are full of exhaustion and fear, their mouths hangin
g open. Scattered in the flatbed are several empty Super Soakers, and there are deflated blood bags everywhere. There’s also a large cardboard box full of something that Michael can’t make out.

  For a long moment, there’s just the sound of heavy breathing. Michael can clearly make out the look of shock on Kevin’s face.

  “What the fuck, man?” the big man says. “I mean … what the fuck?”

  His expression is full of not only horror but worry. Michael can relate.

  “We can’t stay here,” Joel says, his voice sounding hollowed out.

  Kevin is nodding his head slowly, distracted by the horror.

  Neither man cares to directly address what has just happened.

  “Have you heard from anyone?” Joel asks. With shaking hands, he reaches into his pocket, finds a cigarette back. It takes him a moment to realize that it’s empty, and he lets it drop to the asphalt.

  Rachel lets out a sob.

  “Ron at the school,” Kevin says. “They were driven out of there. They weren’t prepared. There were maybe a dozen of them there, a dozen survivors. Lost a few of them, like we did.”

  “Who did you lose?” Michael cuts in.

  “Karen, for one, and I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember the other one’s name. The dude.”

  “We gotta get out of here,” Joel says. “We need a place to go, we can’t just keep driving around. We need a location.”

  “The library,” says Kevin.

  Joel stares at him.

  “That’s where Ron went. He’d been thinking about it for a while, I guess. Easily defendable. Two stories. Good views out of thick windows, upstairs and down. And a generator on the roof.”

  “How’s he know that?”

  “Someone in his crew did janitorial there a while back.”

  “Well, let’s check it out.”